Yes. Industry standard.
5 replies (most recent on top)
Yes, they do stack ranking.
Call it whatever you want: stack ranking, performance distribution, development conversations. When people are ranked against each other and a predetermined percentage has to fall every year, the outcome is baked in no matter how friendly the language. I know this because I lived it.
Behind the Fidelity Jobs Instagram: coffee with pals, kindergarten trust-falls, team bike rides, lunch by that fetid pond in Dallas, there's a colder system humming underneath. You know it. Everyone inside knows it. The friendships might be real but so is the blade.
You're not competing against the market. You're not competing against a standard. You're competing against the person sitting next to you or the person across town from you for survival. The most corrosive part is that these systems might encourage good people to perform for optics, not for clients.
Details get rounded. Not because people are bad per se, but because the system quietly teaches that precision could be dangerous for your career. When your livelihood depends on relative rank, honesty can become a liability. You may not lie outright but you may start to adjust and omit. You may start allowing ambiguity to do the dirty work. That's the moral erosion I witnessed, one calibration cycle at a time.
But enjoy the cookies and the team outings. Every system needs its anesthetic.
no
Yes, managers stack rank employees. Even though they call raises/ bonuses “merit,” it is all favoritism.